Lesson Five: Mississippi in 1964, A Turning Point Objective: Students will learn about the struggle of African Americans in Mississippi to gain the vote as well as those who helped them secure it, including the Freedom Summer Workers and Fannie Lou Hamer. Using a voter registration form from the 1950s, students will experience the difficulties of registering to vote as an African American in the 1960s. Materials: Mississippi in 1964, A Turning Point; Mississippi Literacy Test; Literacy Test Teacher’s Guide; Securing a Voice; Fannie Lou in Review; Mississippi Civil Rights Map and Timeline; Journal Five: Ask Yourself. Procedures: Activity One: Registering to Vote 1. Distribute and read Mississippi in 1964, A Turning Point, discussing with students that in addition to ending segregation, there was a major push to secure the vote for African Americans across the state. The purpose of Freedom Summer was to help African Americans gain the right to vote without being forced to complete a biased literacy test. 2. Print out a copy of the Mississippi Literacy Test (voter registration form) and distribute it to students. 3. Using the Literacy Test Teacher’s Guide, choose one section of the Constitution for students to copy and interpret. 4. Tell students that it was only African Americans who had to interpret difficult sections of the Constitution such as these. Discuss with your students if this is fair or not? Why? 5. Also discuss the question regarding criminal records. Many African Americans were charged with crimes on very little evidence (such as Clyde Kennard who had been accused of possession of liquor, reckless driving, and conspiracy for theft when he had done nothing wrong). Is this a fair question to ask a potential voter? Why or why not? 6. Finally, discuss with students the consequences of attempting to register to vote. African Americans had to be prepared to face harassment that could include intimidation and physical harm. Would your students be ready to face this today? Activity Two: Promote the Vote 1. Have students create picket signs or advertisements supporting voter registration or integration. Include at least one of the following sound devices and figurative language in each: a. Alliteration: The repetition of initial consonant sounds, ex. “Victory in Voting” b. Onomatopoeia: Words that are spelled like they sound, ex. “Bam,” “Zip,” “Pow” c. Rhyme: Echoing sounds, ex. “Promote the Vote” d. Simile: Comparing unlike things with like or as, ex. “Not being able to vote is like not being able to speak.” e. Metaphor: Comparing unlike things as equals, ex. “The right to vote is a powerful weapon.” f. Personification: Giving human characteristics to a non-human thing. 2. Have students display their posters in the classroom or school and explain them when necessary. Activity Three: Fannie Lou on Capitol Hill 1. Distribute and read Securing a Voice. 2. Play the audio of Fannie Lou Hamer’s speech at the 1964 Democratic Convention while students read along. a. The audio can be found at http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/sayitplain/flhamer.html or by Googling “Fannie Lou Hamer 1964 Democratic Convention.” b. Remind students that this was a speech to Congress, made under oath, about what Hamer had personally experienced. 3. Distribute Fannie Lou in Review to students and have them fill in the missing blanks about Hamer’s speech to Congress. If time allows, facilitate a close reading of the speech as a class and discuss its effectiveness. 4. Give students the opportunity to label their Mississippi Civil Rights Map and Timeline with locations and events covered during the class activities and discussions. PB 5. Students will answer the questions in Journal Five: Ask Yourself individually before discussing them aloud. 1 Copyright 2014. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Extension Activity: Facts Brought to Film Watch Murder in Mississippi with your students. This film revolves around three people – a Mississippi African American, and two Northern Jewish students participating in the 1964 Freedom Summer. Their efforts to help African Americans to register to vote made them targets in the fight for civil rights in Mississippi. The film climaxes with the death of the three workers in Neshoba County at the hands of white supremacists. Their disappearance and deaths brought the FBI to Mississippi and put the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi on the National Stage. Produced by Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc., 2008. Color, 97 minutes. High school to adult. This film can be borrowed free of charge from the Mississippi History on Loan Collection. Go to http://www.mdah. ms.gov/new/learn/classroom-materials/mississippi-history-on-loan-film-collection/ or contact the Outreach Programs Coordinator at 601-576-6997. Go to http://www.mdah.ms.gov/new/learn/classroom-materials/lesson-plans-and-teaching- units/ to access an accompanying film activity packet which includes additional activities and primary source documents related to Freedom Summer. Extension Activity: Everyday Battle View Fannie Lou Hamer: Everyday Battle with your students. Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi civil rights activist, was famous for the phrase, “I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.” Hamer, from Ruleville, Mississippi decided to stand up and make a change by registering to vote. The struggle began for Hamer and many others whereas she began to fight for human rights and became interested in understanding the political process of America. This led to the creation of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Produced by History On Video Inc. Color/black and white, 35 minutes. Middle school to adult. This film can be borrowed free of charge from the Mississippi History on Loan Collection. Go to http://www.mdah. ms.gov/new/learn/classroom-materials/mississippi-history-on-loan-film-collection/ or contact the Outreach Programs Coordinator at 601-576-6997. Extension Activity: The Voice of a Freedom Summer Worker Use the Foner Freedom Summer Papers lesson plan available at http://www.mdah.ms.gov/new/learn/classroom-materials/ lesson-plans-and-teaching-units/ Students will look at the different ways the events of 1964 were described in letters from participants, articles covering the event, and Foner’s own report. They will also consider Eudora Welty’s story, “The Demonstrators” in order to look at the way attitudes towards civil responsibility have changed since the civil rights era and how technology has impacted these attitudes. Adaptable for grades nine to twelve. Extension Activity: Legally Speaking Look at Freedom Summer, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and voting rights through the eyes of the legal experts associated with Mississippi’s 1964 Freedom Summer with the documentary Mississippi, America. Produced by WSIU Carbondale. Color/black and white, 57 minutes. Middle school to adult. This film can be borrowed free of charge from the Mississippi History on Loan Collection. Go to http://www.mdah. ms.gov/new/learn/classroom-materials/mississippi-history-on-loan-film-collection/ or contact the Outreach Programs Coordinator at 601-576-6997. Extension Activity: Read About It Read The Freedom Summer Murders by Don Mitchell, a non-fictional account of the events of 1964 through the 2005 conviction of Edgar Ray Killen. Written for young adults, the book draws heavily upon primary source documents (all of which are cited) and is well-illustrated with photographs depicting the people and events related to the 1964 murders. 2 Copyright 2014. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Mississippi in 1964, A Turning Point In 1962, a coalition of major civil rights organizations had been formed with the goal of gaining African Americans the right to vote. Together, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and others formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO). In June of 1964, COFO launched the Mississippi Freedom Summer, a campaign to register as many African American voters as possible in the state where voting was the lowest in the country at 6.7%. COFO also set up freedom houses, freedom schools, and community centers in small towns to assist African American citizens. More than 3,500 students (including children and adults) attended over thirty Freedom Schools which taught lessons in black history and constitutional rights as well as standard classroom curriculum. The student program that paired native Mississippians with northern (predominantly white) civil rights activists faced many challenged during its ten-week course: four workers and three Mississippians were killed; eighty workers were beaten and 1,062 arrested; and thirty-seven churches and thirty homes or business were bombed or burned. On June 24, the Freedom Summer Project made national news due to the disappearance of three young civil rights workers, James Chaney, an African American Mississippian, and Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman (northerners of Jewish decent). The FBI found their bodies buried beneath an earthen dam approximately six weeks later. During the course of the investigation, the bodies of eight other African American men were found, three of whom were known civil rights activists; the remaining five have never been identified. Although the Freedom Summer Project failed to register the number of African American voters it had hoped to, the publicity gained from the disappearance and murder of Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman, helped propel the troubles of Mississippi into the national spotlight. It also helped raise the profile of the newly formed Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party (MFDP), a political party designed to challenge the seats held by Mississippi Democrats with segregationist agendas. At the 1964 Democratic Convention, held in August in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the MFDP claimed that because African Americans were MFDP State Convention in Jackson Mississippi, August 1964. MDAH, not allowed to vote in Mississippi, the state’s Archives and Records Services.